“I want thank the community and friends for all they have done for my family,” Eastman, who goes by “B.J.,” posted Thursday on Facebook, adding that words could not “explain the love feel right now.”

“There’s no way could ever get through this without it,” he wrote. “I would like everyone to remember my son how they want to but most of all how he has made our community and other communities far and wide stop and forget about judgment and hate.”

“Our community is full of love and togetherness right now,” he concluded his post. “My son made the world a better place. He continues to do so and I will always honor him for that. I ask that we all focus on that.”

Meanwhile, his community in southwestern Washington has drawn closer together in the shadow of such a vicious crime.

“When you have a county as close-knit and tight as Lewis and a town like Randle, which is even smaller, a tragic incident like this is going to impact everybody,” Lewis County Prosecuting Attorney Jonathan Meyer tells PEOPLE.

Charging documents previously obtained by PEOPLE show how, according to investigators, Ben was tricked into going in the woods sometime after texting early on June 24 with another 16-year-old boy, Benito Marquez, a friend and classmate who had known Ben for years.

Marquez and his older brother, 21-year-old Jonathon Adamson, “lured” Ben “under the guise of a camping trip,” prosecutors said in a probable cause affidavit.

There the pair allegedly carried out an assault they had planned together: striking Ben for some “20 to 45 minutes” and kicking him more than 100 times. During the attack, Ben was sexually assaulted with a stick, according to the affidavit.

Adamson and Marquez beat him in the head with a large rock, just to make sure he was dead, authorities believe.

Finally, they allegedly buried his body on the property of a relative where it was discovered three days later, after Ben was reported missing by his father. His shallow grave was marked with a homemade cross of sticks.

• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

Marquez, who had seemingly posted on Facebook asking for help finding Ben before his body was discovered, was an early subject of the investigation, according to authorities. But he and Adamson then allegedly fled the county, traveling some 200 miles east, before being found by the state patrol on June 29, the probable cause affidavit states.

They were each interviewed by police and subsequently charged with first-degree rape and murder as well as tampering with physical evidence and unlawful disposal of remains, the affidavit states.

Detention records confirm they remain in custody in Lewis County in lieu of $ 10 million bond.

They have not entered pleas and an attorney representing them declined to comment to PEOPLE. They are scheduled to return to court on Thursday.

Lewis County brothers charged with murder & rape in death of Ben Eastman. Bail set at 10 mil each. Back in court Thurs the 12th Latest 6p pic.twitter.com/VNzoXRdFDb

“I want everyone to remember the love we feel for each other,” he posted on Facebook Friday, following a vigil for Ben. “My son will live in our hearts.”

He also offered this: “Remember to smile or say hi to a stranger.”

Speaking to local TV station KOMO earlier this week, B.J. said, “It’s easy to get caught up in the negative aspect of this, but I remember my son and his smile.”

“There is evil people out there,” B.J. said then. “I don’t know what makes them tick. I don’t want to know. I’m loved and my son was loved and that’s all I’m about.”

Prosecutor Meyer tells PEOPLE Ben’s death — the violence and intimacy of it — is “hard to put into words.”

“Ben was a nice kid from a good family,” he says.

Others who knew the teen have also paid tribute to his love of the outdoors and sports, especially the Miami Dolphins, and his loyalty and light spirt.

“You’d be in a bad mood and he’d just walk in — you’d just be mad as mad as you could be and he’d just crack a smile and make you giggle just over anything, always,” Ben’s brother Derek Dunaway told KOMO.

“He really liked to stand up for his friends,” Principal Chris Schumaker told the Daily Chronicleafter a vigil Tuesday night at Ben’s school, where he was a rising junior.

“A lot of the time, his friends would get in trouble because of his shenanigans and somehow he was able to kind of sidestep getting caught. So then towards the end he would kind of say, ‘Mr. Schumaker, it was kind of me, I deserve the detention,’ ” the principal recalled. “And I would say, ‘No, you know they did the crime, they get the time.’ He tried really hard to plea-deal consequences his friends earned. But in the end, I would just say ‘Ben, go back to class it’s okay. They’ll get through it, you’ll get through it. There’s always tomorrow.’ ”

Hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons has been hit with a $ 10 million suit accusing him of rape. In a complaint filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Friday, a woman identified only as Jane Doe accused Simmons of raping her in his hotel room. The complaint does not give much detail about when or where […]

Washington state prosecutors say they cannot proceed with a second-degree rape case against rapper Nelly because his accuser has refused to cooperate, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. The 21-year-old accuser said the rapper raped her on his tour bus outside Seattle on October 7. Nelly (real name: Cornell Iral Haynes Jr.) was booked on […]

A woman who helped put her husband behind bars for raping two children in Pennsylvania was sentenced on Monday to five to 15 years for also participating in the sexual assaults, PEOPLE confirms.

Holly Greiner, 31, will be on probation for 15 years after her prison stint, court officials tell PEOPLE. She pleaded guilty in April to two counts of involuntary deviate sexual intercourse with a child. She had the child rape charges against her dismissed after negotiating a plea deal with the prosecution.

Soon after her arrest, Greiner admitted to police that she and her husband forced two children to perform sex acts on each other and with them.

She agreed to assist prosecutors by testifying against her husband, 29-year-old Robert Phillip Greiner, at his trial. He was convicted in November of 11 counts including rape of a child, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, aggravated indecent assault, endangering the welfare of a child and corruption of minors

In February he received what will likely amount to a life sentence, with a minimum of 67-and-a-quarter years behind bars.

He was also found guilty of evidence tampering and witness intimidation — charges that were filed after he made calls to his wife from prison pestering her about recanting her statements to police and pressuring her not to testify at his trial.

• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

The couple was arrested in 2015 after a 10-year-old boy told police in West Manheim Township, Pennsylvania, that he and a 5-year-old girl were sexually abused over a six-month period, court officials confirm.

Both victims testified during last fall’s trial, which prosecutors contend helped them secure the conviction.

PEOPLE could not reach the prosecutor, Chuck Murphy, for comment. He told the York Dispatch that the female victim said she was happy to help put her abusers away.

“She said because she didn’t want to have bad dreams about it anymore,” Murphy told the paper, which reports that a family member said in court the girl has not had any bad dreams about Greiner since the trial.

“Without their courage in coming forward, we couldn’t have made sure this guy can’t do it to anyone else,” he said, noting that “there’s no minimizing how disgusting and horrendous these acts were.”

Megan Rondini was a 20-year-old premed student at the University of Alabama in July 2015 when her life changed.

That’s when Rondini, a junior, told friends that she had met a man at a popular bar in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. At some point in the evening, she alleged she was sexually assaulted at his home, possibly after being drugged.

According to her parents, Rondini went into a downward spiral after the alleged assault. They say she suffered depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder. She withdrew from the University and returned home to Texas. In February 2016, she hanged herself.

Now Rondini’s parents have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against several people who they say failed her daughter. In the lawsuit, obtained by PEOPLE, Michael and Cynthia Rondini are suing their daughter’s alleged rapist, two university employees, the Tuscaloosa County sheriff, a sheriff’s deputy, and a sheriff’s office investigator.

The complaint alleges that the university did not give Rondini adequate psychological treatment and support after the incident. The suit says that specific University employees “deliberately and repeatedly denied services and mishandled accommodations with hostility.”

The suit also claims that the sheriff’s office inadequately pursued the investigation, and were sympathetic towards the alleged rapist rather than their daughter. The suit also claims that authorities focused on some of Rondini’s actions, including taking a handgun and cab fare from her alleged attacker’s home.

• Want to keep up with the latest crime coverage? Click here to get breaking crime news, ongoing trial coverage and details of intriguing unsolved cases in the True Crime Newsletter.

The Rondini’s attorney, Leroy Maxwell Jr., did not return PEOPLE’s call for comment, but told AL.com that the family hopes this lawsuit will prevent other families from going through the same thing. “The Rondini family is not in this for the money, they are only interested in shining a bright light on a tragic yet preventable situation,” Maxwell said in a statement. “The court will determine if this case rises to the level of punitive damages.”

Meanwhile, several entities are working together to strengthen their support of sex assault victims. The university is partnering with the nearby hospital, the District Attorney’s office and law enforcement to establish two victim advocacy programs to care for sexual assault victims. The organizations also said in a statement that they are retraining their staffs.

The University of Alabama has defended its actions. “When Megan went to the hospital, a university advocate met her at the hospital to provide support and stayed with her throughout the examination process,” the school said in a statement. “Megan also received information from university representatives regarding services available to her on campus, including counseling through the university’s Women & Gender Resource Center.”

The alleged attacker has not been charged with any crime. He and his lawyer did not return PEOPLE’s calls for comment.

These hospitals are failing to give rape victims emergency contraception because of religious affiliation.Allure
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The 30-second video is simple but powerful, focusing on a text message conversation between two guy friends. As the conversation goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that a non-consensual sexual interaction between one of the men and a woman may have occurred the night prior. The PSA takes the casual language used between two bros and makes its subtext the actual text.

When one guy asks his friend if he remembers that “drunk chick” he was “talking to” at a recent party, the chat autocorrects “talking to” to “targeting.” When the friends asks if he “got some,” the guy responds, “Well… I had to encourage her a bit.” “Encourage” quickly autocorrects to “force.”

The spot was created by marketing company Mekanism for sexual assault awareness and prevention organization It’s On Us, which was spearheaded in 2014 by former President Barack Obama and former Vice President Joe Biden.

It’s On Us Director Rebecca Kaplan explained to The Huffington Post why it’s so important to call out these subtleties of language.

“At It’s On Us, we believe it’s important to highlight the subtle and common language that perpetuates rape culture because it’s so pervasive in our society and often goes unnoticed,” Kaplan said. “When we don’t check ourselves and our friends who are using that type of language, we make it acceptable. This is dangerous because language can make rape culture acceptable, and even perpetuate it.”

Towards the end of the video a voiceover sums up the PSA: “Don’t ignore the subtexts.”

As Kaplan added: “What we say matters and this video was created to demonstrate that it’s on all of us to choose our words wisely.”

LOS ANGELES (AP) — "Last Tango in Paris" is making headlines again 44 years after the controversial film came out. A recently unearthed video interview with Italian director Bernardo Bertolucci from 2013 has renewed interest, and outrage, over what happened to actress Maria Schneider on set during the infamous butter rape scene.

Designers from Vivienne Westwood to Oscar de la Renta and Isaac Mizrahi have long mined Scottish tartans for inspiration. But perhaps none is more closely associated with the theme than Alexander McQueen, who broke out with his seminal “Highland Rape” collection in 1995 and reprised it for fall 2006 with his “Widows of Culloden” effort, which he described as “very ‘Macbeth.’” WWD called it “a moment” that lived up to the hype — “fabulously creative and achingly wearable.” Afterward, McQueen said, “I wanted to show a more poetic side to my work….I find beauty in melancholy.”

“If you succeed in passing through this line without leaving a single enemy alive (…), I proclaim: these women, these houses, this wine, all that you find there is yours, for your pleasure and your will.” The same promise could have been made in ancient biblical times, or uttered by Agamemnon facing Troy, but in this historical case it was made in World War II. In 1944, a French general goaded Moroccan soldiers to break the German lines in Monte Cassino, Italy, in a battle that allowed the Allies to advance toward Rome and ultimate victory. The spoils of war: some 7,000 Italian women were marocchinate or “morrocaned”– raped in the days following the battle.

This is the background for Marco Tutino‘s new opera Two Women (La Ciociara), based on Alberto Moravia‘s 1958 novel of the same name that led to the filmed version by Vittorio de Sica, starring Sophia Loren as the Roman shopkeeper Cesira, a young widow and mother of a teenage girl. (The film can be watched free on the internet.)

Commissioned by David Gockley, the adventurous director of San Francisco Opera (seven new operas commissioned during his tenure), Tutino co-wrote the libretto and composed the work for star soprano Anna Caterina Antonacci, the perfect operatic incarnation of the down-to-earth, clever, resourceful and sexy heroine. Antonacci is a beauty who has created sensations with the roles of Carmen (Bizet) and Cassandra (Berlioz). She managed seemingly effortlessly to step into Sophia Loren’s shoes in this story of a refugee mother trying in vain to protect her innocent daughter and herself from the dangers of war.

Gockley gathered a remarkable team around Tutino (a renowned composer in Italy, but barely known in the States) and Antonacci: director Francesca Zambello whose latest coup at San Francisco Opera was her “all-American” Ring Cycle; set designer Peter J. Davison who created spectacular town and village scenes of war using historical footage and video collages by S. Katy Tucker; and Company Music Director and conductor Nicola Luisotti.

A provocative concept

Tutino has written a 21st century opera that looks back at two traditions: the style of Italian verismo opera (like I Pagliacci or Cavalleria Rusticana, both performed at the Met last season) and post-War neo-realism in Italian cinema, creating an excitingly modern blend of these traditional styles. The new opera (Tutino’s fifteenth) has been poorly received by the American press, mocked as Puccini-light, as not neo-verismo (as director Zambello called it) but hyper-verismo. It has also been belittled as relentlessly melodramatic film music. These critical voices sound much like the critics who attacked Puccini some hundred years ago and still love to attack him today.

“Musical modernism being so chic — let’s turn our back on that!” Gockley proposed at a press conference for the opera, “Be heroic: go against the grain!” My modernism-tired ears pricked up with relief, thinking: it’s about time. Look at Philip Glass who already stepped out some 30 years ago… With Tutino (and two years ago Mark Adamo’s The Gospel of Mary Magdalen), Gockley hopes to “ignite a new tradition.” Tutino is a neo-romantic composer who dares to show that music has its richest roots in the past. His work honors and celebrates tradition instead of exhausting his energy in trying to annihilate it. Of course, this makes his music a provocation to the modernist party-line.

A new tradition

Two Women walks a satisfying line between harmony and dissonance, high drama and lyrical sensitivity. The composer’s particular talent lies in the way he writes for the singing voice, the area where most modernist composers tend to fail most painfully. He gives them melodic lines and phrases that are fully integrated into the orchestral composition. There are no arias in the classical sense, but a style of writing between aria and recitative: in an interview Antonacci compared them to arioso recitatives by Mozart.

One could argue that every now and then the drama is laid on a bit thick, as when the return of mother and daughter to Cesira’s native village is announced by a long, bombastic “homeland” surge of the orchestra. But most of the time Tutino’s dramatic urgency keeps the dread of war present and acute, conveying that, like it or not, being at the edge of life and death is relentless.

By comparison with the novel and film version of Two Women, Tutino exaggerates the role of the villain, Giovanni (powerfully sung by baritone Mark Delavan), a macho rapist par excellence who hounds Cesira throughout the story. One has to remember, however, that opera aims at the archetypal. (Just open the newspaper any day to find that macho rapists have a timeless presence.) Tutino maintains the importance of Michele, the pacifist school teacher with communist leanings (sung with good voice but without much charisma by young, debuting tenor Dimitri Pittas). Michele befriends Cesira, becomes her new love interest and is promptly executed by the fascist Giovanni.

Mother-daughter drama

Toward the end, as the dramatic story of Cesira and her daughter Rosetta’s survival tenses up, Tutino becomes more lyrical, balancing the brutality of rape and murder with the melancholy of popular songs (“Unlucky is he who hopes and dreams…”), a wartime pop hit and village waltzes — musical themes that in fact are woven throughout the composition.

One of the most heart-wrenching scenes reunites mother and daughter after they have been raped (offstage) by a bunch of Moroccan soldiers. Rosetta, sung with girlish purity by a brilliant young singer-actress, Sarah Shafer, has turned into a lump, stunned with childlike disbelief and devastating adult realization. Cesira tries to approach her, and under Zambello’s subtle psychological direction, Antonacci is torn with guilt and shame, aware there are only wrong approaches, wrong moves, and yet irresistibly drawn by the pain and pity of a mother. Rosetta rejects her, and Cesira sings a tender, desperate lullaby, telling her child to sleep and forget: tomorrow there will be no pain, hoping against hope to still comfort her daughter.

This scene would have made a daringly ambivalent, modern ending. But Tutino pulls off another finale, a village scene with a post-war crooner (charming real-life pop singer Pasquale Esposito) leading the dance. The repercussions of the girl’s rape are present in the way Rosetta dances with a disturbing mixture of innocence and self-abnegation, yielding to every man in the square, while her mother helplessly looks on.

If this kind of highly realistic storytelling disturbs critics who scorn it as hyper-verismo, I suspect they prefer not to feel what this opera offers them to feel. (Making me wonder if modernism in music, being an early 20th century and post-War creation, chose as its mission precisely this avoidance of feeling.)

The final scene provides traditional operatic story “closure” with the triumph of the Allied Forces, the unmasking of the collaborator Giovanni and the revelation of his crime of killing Michele. This denouement leads to a somewhat happier ending when mother and daughter are able to share their tears in each other’s arms.

Clear and present danger

The audience was thrilled the day I saw the performance, celebrating the heros and going after the villains with rigorous boos, while outside, at Civic Plaza, hundreds of thousands of Gay Pride revelers danced and shouted their now legal liberation from arcane patriarchal lore.

The clear and present danger for women in a war zone is reflected in another oeuvre San Francisco Opera presents right now, featuring Antonacci again, this time in the five-hour epic Les Troyens, The Trojans, by Berlioz. Here, as the visionary of Troy’s downfall and doom, she convinces the women of Troy to commit collective suicide rather than submit to the victors, the murdering, raping, enslaving hordes of Greek men.

In this exciting summer season of SF Opera, turning back to the past, in history as well as in musical traditions, is perfectly relevant for our time.

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ACRX Recognition Gallery: American Consultants Rx
http://www.acrx.org -As millions of Americans strive to deal with the economic downturn,loss of jobs,foreclosures,high cost of gas,and the rising cost of prescription drug cost. Charles Myrick ,the President of American Consultants Rx, announced the re-release of the American Consultants Rx community service project which consist of millions of free discount prescription cards being donated to thousands of not for profits,hospitals,schools,churches,etc. in an effort to assist the uninsured,under insured,and seniors deal with the high cost of prescription drugs.

The American Consultants Rx discount prescription cards are to be given free to anyone in need of help curbing the high cost of prescription drugs.

Due to the rising costs, unstable economics, and the mounting cost of prescriptions, American Consultants Rx Inc. (ACRX) a.k.a (ACIRX) an Atlanta based company was born in 2004. The ACRX discount prescription card program was created and over 25 million discount prescription cards were donated to over 18k organizations across the country to be distributed to those in need of prescription assistance free of charge since 2004.

The ACRX cards will offer discounts of name brand drugs of up to 40% off and up to 60% off of generic drugs. They also possess no eligibility requirements, no forms to fill out, or expiration date as well .One card will take care of a whole family. Also note that the ACRX cards will come to your organization already pre-activated .The cards are good at over 50k stores from Walgreen, Wal mart, Eckerd”s, Kmart, Kroger, Publix, and many more. Any one can use these cards but ACRX is focusing on those who are uninsured, underinsured, or on Medicare. The ACRX cards are now in Spanish as well.

American Consultants Rx made arrangements online for the ACRX card to be available at http://www.acrxcards.com where it can also be downloaded. This arrangement has been made to allow organizations an avenue to continue assisting their clients in the community until they receive their orders of the ACRX cards. ACRX made it possible for cards to be requested from online for individuals and organizations free of charge. Request for the ACRX cards can also be made by mailing a request to : ACRX, P.O.Box 161336,Atlanta,GA 30321, faxing a written request to 404-305-9539,or calling the office at 404-767-1072. Please include name (if organization please include organization and contact name),mailing address,designate Spanish or English,amount of cards requested,and telephone number.

American Consultants Rx is working diligently to assist as many people and organizations as possible. It should be noted that while many other organizations and companies place a cost on their money saving cards, American Consultants Rx does not believe a cost should be applied, just to assist our fellow Americans. American Consultants Rx states that it will continue to strive to assist those in need.

When asked if he believed abortion should be legal if a woman had been raped, Duggar said, “If a woman is raped, the rapist should be executed instead of the innocent unborn baby. … Rape and incest represent heinous crimes and as such should be treated as capital crimes.”

While Duggar was running on a platform that included this position about rape, the first allegations that Josh had molested a child surfaced. According to In Touch Weekly, which broke the story, a female minor told Duggar in March 2002 that Josh, who was 14 at the time, had been sexually touching her as she slept. Josh admitted as much to his parents in July 2002.

A police report suggests that the first victim who came forward lived in the same home as Josh. In March 2003, more minors accused Josh of touching their breasts and genitals. The police report suggests that four of the five total victims were Josh’s sisters.

Duggar did not alert authorities. He reportedly did not punish his son at all, except to send him to live and work with a family friend for a while.

When Josh returned, his father allegedly took him to speak with Arkansas State Trooper Jim Hutchens, who gave the boy a “very stern talk.” According to In Touch, Hutchens is now serving 56 years in jail for child pornography.

The authorities first heard about the allegations in 2006, when an anonymous woman contacted “The Oprah Winfrey Show” with details of the accusations. The police launched an investigation, and In Touch reports five victims confirmed that Josh had touched their breasts and genitals.

Reportedly, the police did not press charges because the statute of limitations had expired.

The Duggar family could not be reached for comment. TLC did not respond to a request for comment.

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Model Janice Dickinson has sued Bill Cosby for defamation over statements by his representatives that called her claims the comedian raped her in 1982 lies.

Dickinson’s lawsuit filed Wednesday in Los Angeles Superior Court seeks unspecified damages on defamation, false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress claims. The suit states Dickinson requested a retraction from Cosby about statements calling her allegations, made last year to “Entertainment Tonight,” a lie. An email sent to Cosby’s attorney Martin Singer was not immediately returned. Singer called Dickinson’s claims that Cosby raped her in a Lake Tahoe, California, hotel room in 1982 “false and outlandish” in a letter to The Associated Press last year.

Dickinson’s suit states the denials by Cosby’s camp have caused her embarrassment, humiliation and led to her being re-victimized.

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So began a seemingly comedic speech at the University of Virginia’s Valedictory Exercises by actor Ed Helms on Friday. In front of a large audience, the comedian peppered in jokes about Netflix and student loans before turning a harsh eye on the Rolling Stone rape story scandal, which has drawn widespread condemnation and lawsuits against the magazine.

“It has been said that a rolling stone gathers no moss,” Helms said. “I would add that sometimes a rolling stone also gathers no verifiable facts or even the tiniest morsels of journalistic integrity.”

“Rolling Stone tried to define you this year,” Helms said. “As a result, not only was this community thrown deep into turmoil, but the incredibly important struggle to address sexual violence on campuses nationwide was suddenly more confusing than ever and needlessly set back.”

During his speech, Helms also delved into the strikingly negative news coverage of the Baltimore riots, chastising many major networks for their portrayal of the protestors as “thugs,” noting “Rolling Stone’s rush to define is just the tip of the iceberg.”

“The reductive labels aren’t helping and we better stop applying them, because there are a lot of Americans in a lot of pain,” Helms said. “We try to define others with simple labels because it makes the world easier to understand.”

“This community didn’t fall for the fallacy that just because Rolling Stone was wrong everything here must be perfectly peachy,” he continued. “You all had the courage to understand you can be outraged at Rolling Stone and still ask yourselves hard questions: When sexual violence does occur in our community, do we have the best possible protocols and resources available to our students? And UVA is charging forward to answer those questions and you should be proud of that.”

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Ari Mostov says she was bitter that she felt pushed out of her “dream school” in 2013, after campus officials didn’t take her report of rape seriously.

Now, the 22-year-old is channeling her energy into “It Happened Here,” a documentary about campus rape — work she said makes her feel like she is making an impact and has also helped her heal.

Mostov filed a complaint in May 2013 against the University of Southern California that resulted in an ongoing federal investigation of the school. In the complaint, Mostov detailed that the university’s Department of Public Safety had told her she had not been raped because her assailant stopped and did not orgasm.

The increased scrutiny on USC began to subside in 2014. Some of the complainants graduated, while others said they became too stressed to continue speaking about their cases in public. Mostov was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and clinical depression. She had found university employees’ responses to her report of an assault to exacerbate her mental anguish, so she left USC behind.

“I knew returning to school, it was going to be absolute hell again,” Mostov said, so she took time off to address the aftermath of her assault on her own terms.

Mostov was a film and screenwriting major at USC, and was able to find some short-term production work after leaving school. Then she was introduced to Marjorie Schwartz Nielsen in November 2014, who agreed to hire Mostov to help work on the “It Happened Here” release and subsequent campaign and promotions. The film debuted on the cable channel Pivot earlier this year and began being screened on college campuses in conjunction with the White House’s “It’s On Us” anti-sexual violence campaign. It will be released on iTunes and Google Play on May 12.

Working on the film, Mostov said, has been “one of the most amazing experiences” of her life.

“For the longest time I wasn’t able to think about what happened, I wasn’t able to grieve,” Mostov said. “Not being able to return to the school of my dreams and all of this hurt and pain I was putting off — I was finally able to put it to work.”

Nielsen said the survivors she has worked with and interviewed came forward for various reasons — that their assailant attacked someone else, that they felt their school’s atmosphere was getting worse, that they were tired of hearing stories similar to theirs — but what has kept them involved is a desire for “not letting the momentum die.”

“None of them pursued civil suits against their attackers,” she said. “They took up activism because they wanted it to change things.”

At each screening, Neilsen said she explains campaigns some colleges have hosted on their campuses to inspire copy-cat demonstrations, and asks students in attendance to take the White House’s “It’s On Us” pledge.

The “It Happened Here” team has had more than 130 screening requests for the film, including some from organizations in France, Canada and Bangladesh. It’s stretching beyond college campuses, getting screened at several California high schools. On March 30, Mostov and Neilsen spoke about sexual assault at a TEDxYouth event in San Diego. Over the summer, the team will plan for more screenings at schools in the fall. They said they are particularly hoping to get more high school students to see the film, so they can start engaging young people before they arrive at college.

“This affects everyone, and really, in order to stop the cycle, we need to get ahead of these behaviors,” Mostov said. She envisions a day when asking for consent is as routine as asking for a condom.

“We’re really hoping to help to teach people, especially the younger generation, that they have a right to advocate for themselves,” she added. “It’s personally something I really struggled with because I didn’t know.”

Mostov wants to send the message that “I am brave.”

“I am doing this, this happened to me and I’m not going to be silent about it,” she explained. “My story matters too. This is what happened. I don’t care if you don’t believe me, I don’t care. This is what happened to me.”

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Dallagiacomo begins the spoken word by pointing out that Robin Thicke sings the line “I know you want it,” 18 times in “Blurred Lines.” Katwiwa adds that in Rick Ross’ “You Ain’t Even Know It” the rapper says, “Put molly all in her champagne, she ain’t even know it. Took her home and I enjoyed that, she ain’t even know it.” Rape culture has become so mainstream that we hardly bat an eye when music icons sing about it.

“If you take the time on any given day to pay attention, you really start to notice these elements of rape culture permeating almost all areas of American life,” Katwiwa told The Huffington Post. “Many of the examples used in the poem were things Des and I had already heard of or read about prior to sitting to write the piece, but when we did additional research, we were kinda overwhelmed with all the different examples we could have put in our poem.”

Katwiwa’s and Dallagiacomo remind us how intolerable these trends in pop culture are when you consider that nearly one in five women will be raped in their lifetimes. As Katwiwa says in the poem, “Rape no longer only knows closed doors and dark alleyways, it’s assimilated into our daily routine.”

ACRX Recognition Gallery: American Consultants Rx
http://www.acrx.org -As millions of Americans strive to deal with the economic downturn,loss of jobs,foreclosures,high cost of gas,and the rising cost of prescription drug cost. Charles Myrick ,the President of American Consultants Rx, announced the re-release of the American Consultants Rx community service project which consist of millions of free discount prescription cards being donated to thousands of not for profits,hospitals,schools,churches,etc. in an effort to assist the uninsured,under insured,and seniors deal with the high cost of prescription drugs.

The American Consultants Rx discount prescription cards are to be given free to anyone in need of help curbing the high cost of prescription drugs.

Due to the rising costs, unstable economics, and the mounting cost of prescriptions, American Consultants Rx Inc. (ACRX) a.k.a (ACIRX) an Atlanta based company was born in 2004. The ACRX discount prescription card program was created and over 25 million discount prescription cards were donated to over 18k organizations across the country to be distributed to those in need of prescription assistance free of charge since 2004.

The ACRX cards will offer discounts of name brand drugs of up to 40% off and up to 60% off of generic drugs. They also possess no eligibility requirements, no forms to fill out, or expiration date as well .One card will take care of a whole family. Also note that the ACRX cards will come to your organization already pre-activated .The cards are good at over 50k stores from Walgreen, Wal mart, Eckerd”s, Kmart, Kroger, Publix, and many more. Any one can use these cards but ACRX is focusing on those who are uninsured, underinsured, or on Medicare. The ACRX cards are now in Spanish as well.

American Consultants Rx made arrangements online for the ACRX card to be available at http://www.acrxcards.com where it can also be downloaded. This arrangement has been made to allow organizations an avenue to continue assisting their clients in the community until they receive their orders of the ACRX cards. ACRX made it possible for cards to be requested from online for individuals and organizations free of charge. Request for the ACRX cards can also be made by mailing a request to : ACRX, P.O.Box 161336,Atlanta,GA 30321, faxing a written request to 404-305-9539,or calling the office at 404-767-1072. Please include name (if organization please include organization and contact name),mailing address,designate Spanish or English,amount of cards requested,and telephone number.

American Consultants Rx is working diligently to assist as many people and organizations as possible. It should be noted that while many other organizations and companies place a cost on their money saving cards, American Consultants Rx does not believe a cost should be applied, just to assist our fellow Americans. American Consultants Rx states that it will continue to strive to assist those in need.